


Ideal Bounds

by brigitttt



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Frottage, Getting Together, Halloween, M/M, affectionately nicknamed the Gothic AU, writer Laurent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 08:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21194738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brigitttt/pseuds/brigitttt
Summary: It's 1830 in England, and things are getting spooky.





	Ideal Bounds

**Author's Note:**

> For my dear lavender husband Jay (thatgothlibrarian), the spookiest man in my life. Happy early Hallowe'en!

_‘Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world._’ – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, _Frankenstein_

★

_“It’s awful, you see,_” Laurent recites to himself, hurrying along the deteriorating cobblestone towards the church. “_The monster inside all of us, he’s horrifying and shadowy and he’s always there. He feeds on_—”

Laurent stumbles over the space where a cobblestone used to be and swears, flinging his arms out suddenly for balance. Glancing upwards reveals that the sky is fully clouded over now, and Laurent grins; perfect weather. Another hundred metres down the road is the dirt lane to the left, which leads through to the back gate of the churchyard, and the long weed grasses jutting out from the crease between short stone wall and the packed earth of the path. The words circle around his brain like spokes on a wheel: “_He feeds on – he feeds on – he feeds on . . ._” The last word won’t come to him, but his feet are now hopping up the uneven steps into the yard, the garden, the graves. Auguste is here, naturally, and – so is Damen.

Weaving between the grave markers and the varied mix of flowers on each one brings him over to but eventually past Auguste’s raised headstone, and over to the beginnings of a new grave in the northwest quadrant. Laurent quietly creeps around the pile of fresh dirt and leans against the rough bark of the yew tree, adopting a relaxed and casual posture. The gravedigger finally turns around – hulking, rounded shoulders straightening but never conceding size, like a goliath, or a clay golem, or a night beast – and rolls his eyes. Laurent hopes his own eyes are twinkling devilishly back at him.

“If you don’t clear out before the burial the family will be mad at you again,” Damen says, Greek accent adding extra vowel sounds, and Laurent scoffs. People should just accept that there will be the occasional spectator in a graveyard, haunting both the living and the dead. He doesn’t say this aloud though, because Damen has already heard a version of it and will more than likely roll his eyes again and shoo him off. And Laurent has something to show him.

“I’m a visitor, same as them,” he retorts instead, and barrels onto more important topics: “I have another chapter, by the way.”

Damen props his wrist on the upright handle of his shovel. “Show me it, then,” he says matter-of-factly, like he knows that he’ll be exposed to it at some point no matter what. Laurent digs in his satchel for the notebook, the cleaner one that he rewrites everything into after he’s made a mess of the first draft, and dares to toss it over to Damen. He catches it nimbly in one of his calloused hands and flips to where the ribbon is bookmarked. 

Laurent knows that Damen’s grasp of written English is not quite fluent, but he likes to think that he’s helping to teach him more of it, in his own way. Damen – _Damianos_, the beautiful, fluid, voice-deepening name with which he first introduced himself, and then quickly replaced with the diminutive – had come to England with his family after the fall of Napoleon, and while he seems to have had some tutelage in the English language there, the majority must have been verbally taught. Damen’s lived here for a little less than a decade now, and despite the accent, he’s managed to pick up nearly everything Laurent can throw at him, including his written works.

“It’s good!” Damen proclaims, eyes still stuck on the pages. “Spooky.”

“It’s not only spooky though,” Laurent hedges. “Doesn’t it make you think, about things that lie beyond darknesses? I meant for Thomas to see through the spectre that appears in his room, as if we-the-reader are also seeing _through_–”

“Yes, yes, I said it’s good,” Damen says, waving a hand. “Thomas is smart. How will he fight the ghost?”

Laurent sputters. “Fight? No, see, the whole point is that – that’s the message, that he isn’t able to,” and Laurent finally abandons his repose against the tree to come next to Damen, and peer into the notebook. This close, he can smell the earthiness on him and his clothes, settled overtop of the musk of sweat from his labour. Laurent gambles with himself to lay his hand on Damen’s forearm, under the pretense of angling his hand so they can both read, and his heart leaps into his throat when skin touches skin. Many coherent thoughts fly out of his brain as well.

“Why write a ghost you cannot fight? It’s good, I said, but it makes –” and Damen suddenly clears his throat. “It makes not as much sense, to me, perhaps. But I am a foreigner,” he finishes, voice leaning towards judicious. Laurent appreciates the effort, but is still slightly disappointed. He refuses the silent urge to slide his hand up Damen’s forearm, and instead steps back before retrieving his notebook, biting his upper lip into his mouth as he replaces the ribbon. Damen stamps the shovel lightly on its tip, an absentminded action, and angles down to try to look at Laurent’s face: an attempt at reconciliation.

“You’ll show me the next chapter when you write it?” He asks, and Laurent screws up his face into a tight-lipped smile and nods.

“Of course, Damen. I can’t lose the only captive audience I have,” Laurent manages. He braces himself for one more brave look at the man then, just to see his dark eyes under the black curls of his hair. Damen smiles down at him, dimple appearing, and Laurent decides it’s time to visit Auguste.

A headstone that’s only sat for seven years looks much tidier than the ones here since the 1600s, but Laurent can also admit that he loves the look of the older, mossy markers, the eroded angels and crumbling epitaphs. He sets his satchel beside him and spends a couple minutes just sitting on the grass; he never spends too long, not unless he’s writing here, just enough to tell Auguste the occurrences in his life. 

Laurent’s voice is always a whisper, both in respect for other visitors to the graveyard, despite what Damen may think, and because he feels like Auguste might appreciate the quiet privacy of it. He murmurs diligently about how father is faring, the business at the bookstore, his latest letters from Jord on the continent, but he also shifts to enthusiasm, telling him of his writing: the plots he intends to follow, the new characters arising, all the gruesome details he’s planned so far. Laurent runs his palm softly over the grass in front of the headstone, and promises to visit again in the next couple days. 

As he levers himself up from the ground, he hears Damen call his name – gently, with only enough strength to pierce mist – and when he tramps back over to the gravedigger he sees the hole is finally six feet deep.

“My cousin Kyriakos, his name day is tomorrow, and we’re having a big meal, with all the family,” Damen says, and he smiles even wider at Laurent before continuing, as if he would ever need to fight for more of Laurent’s attention. “I hoped you would be free to come for dinner, eat some good traditional food?”

It takes Laurent a moment to realize it’s an invitation. Sometimes Damen’s questions are just regular sentences with upturns at the end, but as soon as he understands he finds himself nodding, unconsciously smiling back at Damen. Laurent looks straight into the deep dark brown of Damen’s eyes, and says, “I’d love to.”

★

Tucked away in the corner of the sitting room, Laurent hunches over the desk and writes. His form is small but messy, ideas emerging spontaneously and demanding to be shoved into margins and between existing lines. A sudden shriek in the night meets the ears of his hero, so much better than subtle creak of wood. It turns out to be a bat, leathery wings and scrunched, upturned face, fangs pointed and – ghoulish red eyes and dripping blood – there should be a skull on the mantelpiece, dripped in wax from a melting candle and eternally grimacing at – the floorboards are solid and darkwood, cobwebbed in patches, and one shifts under the hero’s foot so he must be compelled to see what’s underneath – !

It’s a complicated arrangement of thoughts that enter his mind and exit onto the paper, but this is the reason for the second notebook. He fills that one neatly and methodically, and restricts himself to only minor edits, saving new details for later use only. Laurent’s stomach grumbles, and he distantly recalls his father asking earlier if he would like some dinner. He should have said yes, but he was too engrossed in his work to put it down, even for a moment.

As Laurent sifts through the kitchen pantry he’s reminded of the dinner at Damen’s house a couple days ago. It hadn’t been the first one he’d gone to – Damen’s too welcoming and open a person to know someone for years and not let his family feed them – but this one had stood out somehow among the others. Laurent thinks that maybe it’s because this time he hadn’t felt like so much of an outsider. He knows with warm detail the texture of Damen’s mother’s soft apron as she hugs him, the bright and heady taste of anise cooking with lamb, the crunch of autumn leaves on the worn-down step at the front door. He’d cheered alongside Damen and the rest of them at the pouring of griva and sweet wine, and had forgotten a little of his own life, the isolated one he shares with his anti-social father, his books, and his dead brother. Laurent laughs dryly to himself at that thought.

He finds a bread roll and some leftover chicken that will sufficiently sustain him until bed, and returns to the desk. The hero is currently in a precarious state, caught between the spectre and the top of the treacherous, dilapidated staircase of the crumbling mansion, a rather clever use of real and perceived threats, if Laurent may be so explicitly proud. He switches to a clean page to jot down a small idea about twisted, gnarly tree branches, shriveled leaves shivering in the cruel wind of night, but then is momentarily distracted by the thought of the yew tree in the graveyard that day of Damen’s invitation, how he’d leant against it until he hadn’t. But what if he’d let Damen come to him with his question instead? Abandon his shovel on the pristine headstone and corner Laurent, trap him between the tree and the trunk of his own body? He would have smelled the same, but Laurent could have reached out a hand and placed it, pale and fine-fingered, against Damen’s belly perhaps, lovely through the dark wool of his work shirt.

Laurent closes his eyes and leans his wrist against the edge of the desk, imagining the sound of heavy hob-nailed boots walking away on the dark soil of the graveyard.

★

The heavy clouds looming over the city finally burst when Laurent is visiting Auguste. As much as he comes to the graveyard, he rarely enters the church; either it’s full of people he does not wish to see or it’s devoid of any kind of interesting spirit, but Laurent nevertheless dashes inside the doors when the sprinkling of raindrops steadily builds into a downpour. 

The nave appears empty when he enters, slightly dripping, and the soles of his boots sound on the stone floor to echo up into the arches above. Patting a hand over his satchel to make sure his notebook is safe under the leather, Laurent glances up at the glass window, momentarily entranced by the waves of water running down the panes. 

A scuffing sound from further in makes him turn his head, but it is, miraculously, Damen, sheepishly rounding the corner from the south transept. He’s holding a kerchief in his hands, wiping off the wet and the dirt, and Laurent swallows around the sudden stop in his throat. The man should look out of place in here – a dark, Greek Orthodox gravedigger in the crossing of a dusty Anglican church – but Laurent thinks it might be the rain, perhaps, like a great flood, that brings together common people into a place neither of them really belong. Not that he and Damen are really alike, all told, but Laurent wonders if there’s always a certain kind of likeness between men, when they want to be so. He bites the inside of his cheek as Damen approaches, and thinks with a small amount of guilt about Damen’s hands around the kerchief, how Damen’s strong fingers might twist in another material.

“You’re back,” Damen says with a smile, tucking the corner of the kerchief into the waistband of his trousers, and Laurent only now notices he’s just in his work shirt and braces; the wet coat must be draped over the back of a pew in the transept. Laurent just nods, and wordlessly hands over his notebook. It feels abruptly sacrilege for Laurent to say even a quiet word under the steady drumming of the rain, but Damen’s voice is all right, perfectly insinuating itself into the still air between them. He takes Laurent’s notebook over to one of the pews, and rests it open in his lap like a hymnal. 

“Does it ever . . . “ Damen starts after a while. He chews his lip on the edge of a question, and Laurent hangs on his words from where he’s perched at the stone sill watching the rain. “Does it what?” he asks.

“Will it become happy? For Thomas?” Damen says. It strikes Laurent that he hadn’t been thinking of an ending to the story at all, happy or otherwise. He knows Damen’s just read the most recent addition, in which the hero finds the cavern of full of skeletons underneath the mansion’s entryway, but Laurent can’t see what’s prompted this line of questioning.

Instead, he responds somewhat defensively with, “Does it have to?” Damen blinks down to where Laurent has crossed his arms over his chest and places the notebook carefully down on the seat. 

“Is it not agreeable, to put someone through the experience of ghosts and skeletons and – and sadness,” Damen says, “Only to deliver them some kind of peace? Of life?”

“Life?” Laurent says. He feels his face flushing, and he wants to grab his notebook and clutch it to his chest, like a child with a toy. 

“After all the death, Laurent,” adds Damen, softly, and there it is, the pity in his voice when he says Laurent’s name. The tone of apology for the state of Laurent’s emotion, clinched achingly when he says, “Isn’t it time to live?”

“I understand,” Laurent bites out, and at this he does pick up the notebook and hurriedly shove it into his satchel. “You think this is merely an extended mourning, don’t you, writing about tragedies and morbidity and internal pain because I haven’t finished feeling the loss of my brother.” Laurent’s voice is shaking, and so are his hands, so he holds the bottom of his own waistcoat in a vice grip. Damen tries to interrupt, standing up awkwardly in the gap between pews, but Laurent can’t let him say more. “No, perhaps you’re right, it’s been seven years, maybe I _am_ a terrible person for creating something so passionate out of all this death, but –” and Laurent shouldn’t say it, needs to close his mouth against the wretched words that really will tear apart the sticky web between himself and this beautiful brightness of a man. He turns down the aisle instead, towards the doors.

“But what? Laurent!” Damen calls, desperate, fumbling out into the aisle as well. It’s still a deluge outside but Laurent’s cheeks feel like they’re on fire and he can’t stay here longer. He stops just inside the narthex and turns back, and hates himself.

“But at least I’m building something, Damen,” he says miserably. “At least I’m not just digging holes,” and it quietly scratches out of his throat, like he only wanted to keep the hurt to himself at the last minute, can’t bear the thought of saying something like that to Damen. He escapes into the rain then, and only once he’s drenched and shivering and on his own doorstep does he think that the mass of regret between them both must equal that of the largest, coldest piece of ice in the north sea.

★

Laurent has to stay in bed for an entire week after his stint in the rain, the first three days of which are spent in a delirium studded with despairing visions of Damen’s swift and simmering hatred for him now, angry dark eyes, Laurent’s own tears. The fever breaks eventually, but only after Laurent entirely convinces himself that he’s just poisoned the best relationship he’s had in his life since Auguste. His father lets him recover upstairs for the rest of the week, but Laurent will owe him greatly at the bookstore for all the meals brought to him in bed.

His father is French, originally, although Alsace is still filled with German language and traditions despite having been annexed by France a hundred and fifty years ago. If asked for his nationality, his father would vehemently declare himself a firm citizen of Great Britain, no matter how strong his accent was. Laurent doesn’t think his father has ever returned to France, even for a visit, since he met Laurent’s mother. All Laurent knows is that his father cooks the same _carpe frite_ and _choucroute_ and Christmas _Kugelhopf_ that he has had since he was a boy himself. He’s a firm, stoic man, one who stays at Laurent’s bedside until he’s gulped down all of the broth he’s been given, just like when Laurent was young.

Laurent sets up a little writing station across his bed, too wrung out with fatigue to use the desk in his room. A collection of notebooks, pencils, a penknife for sharpening them, and books brought up from the sitting room for inspiration and reference alike litter the bedcovers. Walpole’s _Castle of Otranto_ was a gift from Auguste when Laurent was 12, and has been a mainstay on the little shelf in his room ever since. Reeves and Radcliffe have their places as well, with some German novels tucked behind, which Laurent slogs through with his rough knowledge of Alsatian German taught to him by his father. He’d also begged his father during his teenage years for books about human anatomy and the natural sciences, all to further his familiarity with the wild and macabre.

For all his motivation to write while he has the hours to do so, Laurent simply cannot put pencil to paper to devise something worth reading. It seems all he can do is review his conduct at the church with Damen, his embarrassment and guilt and subsequent outburst, how wickedly he’d used his words to tear into someone he cares about. Laurent knows why Damen said the things he did, he’s not so ignorant of his own self-image. He’s just afraid that Damen has finally located all the pieces within Laurent necessary for . . . regret of acquaintance, to put it politely. Laurent doesn’t think he can change all that lies within his heart just for one person to accept him, and so he found himself pushing Damen away the moment the situation inched closer to Laurent’s fears. 

Without writing anything more in his notebook than a small, heartfelt description of the protagonist’s appreciation for honesty and reality in a world of facades and distortions, Laurent goes to sleep with a firm heart. As soon as he’s well, he will seek out Damen, and make things as right as they can be. If that means forgiveness, then all for the better; if it means an end to their mutual regard – Laurent can only hope it won’t come to that.

★

When finally his father declares him healthy – which, despite having no proper medicinal education between them, Laurent is loathe to argue with his father’s judgement before he’s ready to give him a clean bill of health – Laurent dresses in his smartest clothes and heads out to face his fate. He even leaves his satchel and notebook at home, not presuming to require a second opinion on his writing from someone who may be about to fulfill Laurent’s worst fever-induced dreams. 

Except, when he reaches the churchyard, there’s no one there. Well, there are always _many people_ in the churchyard, Laurent thinks, and for the entire search around the property he distracts himself from his queasy stomach by musing about what it means to be a person when one has died; surely Auguste is still a person, still his brother, just not in a living capacity, but could that be due to the fact that Laurent still lives, their father still lives, to hold him as a real person in their memories? Who in this graveyard has been forgotten into non-existence, un-personhood?

Damen is neither hiding in the gravekeeper’s shed nor in the church itself, and Laurent is momentarily at a loss for where Damen could be when he finally remembers an intrinsic facet of his theory of personhood: family. The route to Damen’s home is one which Laurent has only ever taken from the graveyard, a detail which would be more humourous for an individual who is not Laurent, for whom the matter is almost soberly conventional. He reaches the front steps, shoving aside his anxiety in favour of tapping the doorknocker, a ring held in the maw of a beautifully molded brass lion. Unfortunately, Laurent had neglected to plan his course of action upon finding Damen nestled within the blissfully ebullient aura of all of his extended family.

The house isn’t that much larger than the one Laurent lives in with his father, so it always seems on the verge of bursting from the sheer amount of affection, blankets, cookware, and most prominently, people. He’s noticed immediately by Damen’s niece, who is six and is in knots of jealousy over the relative smoothness of Laurent’s hair, but still beams at him from her position halfway up the staircase. She points at him with a small brown finger, and then raises her voice to be heard above the cacophony of relatives on the ground floor to shout, “Laurent is here!”

Laurent can feel the flush creeping slowly up his face as heads pop out from doorways in almost comical numbers, but he can only stare at the back of Damen’s neck, and then his face as he turns around from the hall cupboard across from the front door. He certainly looks wide-eyed and surprised to see Laurent, but not particularly angered. Laurent swallows a small portion of his nervousness, and steps further into the hall. 

Damen meets him halfway, because of course he does. “Your overcoat?” he says politely, while his lanky-limbed teenaged cousin comes up to take the garment to the rack. Laurent is only able to vacillate between opening his mouth to attempt to speak and closing it to smile while Damen’s cousin, brother, aunt, and finally mother offer, respectively: happy greetings, back slaps and well-wishes, pastries, and finally a warm kiss on his cheek. Along the way, he has been maneuvered as if down a factory assembly line into the kitchen, the heart of this home, as he’s come to learn. 

“You are well?” Damen’s mother asks, cupping a hand around the cheek she just kissed. Her accent is much stronger than Damen’s. “You are staying for dinner?” She has the same way of phrasing statements as questions but hers tend to continue sounding like strong advice rather than hopeful suggestions. Laurent’s heart stammers. 

“I’m actually, erm, hoping Damen was–”

“_Damianaki mou_!” she calls out immediately, the hearing in Laurent’s ear on that side momentarily ringing. “Of course, _hriso mou_, and make sure he invites you to eat!” Her voice softens a touch at the term of endearment and then impossibly rises in volume at the last command, and Laurent feels Damen looming up behind him from his summoning. Laurent turns around on the spot with the assistance of Damen’s mother’s hands on his upper arms, like a cramped pirouette. 

After an extended second of expectant silence, in which Damen belies no hint of emotion in his expression other than patient and encouraging curiosity, Laurent comes to terms with the fact that he will have to express remorse over his past actions towards Damen in the middle of his family’s kitchen, with most of Damen’s relatives within close hearing distance. 

“I just wanted to –” he starts in a hush, and finds he can’t look anywhere apart from the untucked ends of Damen’s slim cravat tie without joining gazes with one of Damen’s family members, or forbid it, Damen himself. Laurent attempts to unobtrusively clear his throat, and reattaches his sightline to Damen’s chin. “I’m sorry for what I said last week. I should not have tried to – erm, deliberately, cause offence –”

Damen tilts his head to the side to slide into Laurent’s field of view. “I’m glad to hear it, but only barely over this ruckus,” he says, with a calm smile. “We can find some quiet?” Laurent nods hurriedly.

They navigate themselves through the ground floor until they reach the narrow passageway that leads to the back door of the house; it’s open for some reason, and Laurent can see the cobbles of the back alleyway shining with the recent rain. He can’t decide if being under the scrutiny of Damen’s entire family is better or worse than solely being under Damen’s. He breathes everything out in one heavy rush.

“I’m a person whose thoughts will always be dark, but I cannot allow myself clear conscience if I have too much darkened yours – Damen, say you do not detest the sight of me, or else I truly will –”

“Laurent,” Damen says, and it’s the combination of his voice and the touch of his hand at the side of Laurent’s neck that stills his words, and perhaps his mind as well. The pad of Damen’s thumb rests in the space between Laurent’s cravat and the crease of his jaw, and Laurent is utterly pinned down. For once, he allows himself to stare completely and deeply into Damen’s dark eyes.

“Forgive me,” Laurent says on the softest breath. The corners of Damen’s eyes crinkle and the slightly firmer squeeze of his fingers on Laurent’s neck is the only forewarning he receives before Damen is pressing his lips to the middle of Laurent’s forehead. His eyes close of their own volition, an involuntary reaction to the gentleness emanating from the kisses that press down onto each cheekbone now, light as mothwings against his skin. Just before Damen reaches his lips, Laurent manages to reach shaky fingers up to the bottom buttons on Damen’s waistcoat, not with any purpose other than to imagine a steadier plane, one which might hold him from imbalance at the beautifully warm mouth upon his own.

Laurent kisses in return, a little inept for his greenness in such matters but with a shyly blooming enthusiasm, breaths coming quick enough that he can feel his own pulse where it thrives under Damen’s palm. Any man of Laurent’s age has kissed before, but the fact of the matter is that he’s never had the chance to kiss _Damen_, and he finds that makes all the difference. By the end of it, Laurent feels like a crop burned-off and instantaneously grown anew; he blinks down at where both his hands have ended up around the wide span of Damen’s ribs.

“You are forgiven,” says Damen, and then he laughs to himself, a short but blinding exuberance against which Laurent has no defence. Laurent belatedly shuts his mouth to avoid looking like a fresh-caught fish, but keeps his hands pressed to Damen’s sides for as long as it takes Damen to pull them both back into propriety. 

“Forgiven most eagerly,” Laurent mumbles numbly, and Damen laughs again, louder this time as they loop back into the house. Laurent stays for dinner.

★

For all that he has never once been to France with his father, Laurent has been more than several times to his mother’s family home estate in Scotland, despite never knowing her himself. The trick to feeling like one still belongs in someone else’s home even though one is the very babe whose birth had killed one’s mutual relation is to have one’s father send one and one’s brother up to stay for at least seven days every couple of years, to impress upon the relations your congeniality and general innocence in the entire matter. Laurent may live in England, but he can readily claim a simmering hatred for the land from both sides of his heritage; this tends to put his mother’s family simultaneously at ease and into a brief explosion of spitting curses, carefully aimed to circumvent Laurent himself.

The visit this year is less social than it is semi-obligatory, and mournful. One of the great-uncles has passed – not a great and terribly personal loss to Laurent but one he must recognize if he is to continue to be invited to May Day celebrations in the following years. After a long journey north by stagecoach, he arrives at the manor in a carriage held within a rolling bank of mist, which Laurent thinks is how he would prefer to arrive anywhere from now onwards. 

He’s greeted by his cousins, who are dressed all in black and wearing those particularly stern neutral faces Laurent has only ever seen worn on his Scottish relatives. There’s the familiar itch of discomfort that settles in his gut when his things are brought up from the carriage house by one of the servants. It’s not like he’s unused to the experience of stoic northern wealth, which he lives among for the aforementioned minimum of seven days every couple years, but he’s never been witness to the wealth as it wears a temporary black shroud. He knows these people are more unpretentious than families of a similar status further south, but it’s as if the holding of a funeral heightens the gleam of gold embellishments and twelve-point stag’s heads. 

Nevertheless, Laurent always enjoys the atmosphere of the Scottish countryside, finds it nourishing for his writing to be enveloped on all sides by the moors and the mist and the chilling shadows among the greenery. The landscape appears naturally suited for gloom, especially at this time of the year, and all sorts of delectably dark phrases to note down later when he’s in his rooms. His cousins have to shepherd him through the motions of the week, partly because Laurent’s unsure of what precisely there is to do during these last two days of a traditional wake-vigil, and partly because he becomes distracted by every possible detail he could lift from this atmosphere and place into his notebook.

The only thoughts that distract him more than the literary potential of his surroundings are the ones about Damen. Laurent can’t go more than one waking hour without remembering that – that _kiss_, how brilliant it was, and how likely it is to happen again. He finds himself pondering the give of Damen’s torso under his hands, the natural dip of the man’s spine as it slopes to the small of his back, and how Laurent’s touch might slide along such a path. The thoughts provoke some guilt, but only insofar as he is supposed to be using this time with his relatives to reflect upon the long and tedious life of his late great-uncle, and not how Damen’s mouth might feel on Laurent’s collarbone.

The dead days draw to a close on the day of the funeral, which is marked by a large feast, and Laurent eats his fill of game hen and thanks his good fortune that he’s not required to say a toast during the men’s ceremony. He only has to sip his wine and take even smaller sips of the local scotch, and let his brain shirk the responsibility of trying to decipher the more unintelligible accents of the relatives in attendance. 

Laurent was a newborn for his mother’s funeral, but he knows it was held up here rather than down in England where Auguste was laid to rest. He briefly wishes that he could detach from the procession once they reach the cemetery and say a few words to her, and then he wonders not for the first time this week what it would be like if Damen had come to do all this with him. What might he say to all the mist on the fields, the expanse of the manor house and its property. Perhaps he might eye the fresh grave and compare it to his own accomplishments, or find some fault and whisper it like a secret joke into Laurent’s ear. He shivers. 

There will be a long, bumpy journey back home during which Laurent can fully consider things, but he allows himself one moment, while the coffin is being lowered into the ground, to let his mind alight on how he and Damen may have kissed each other, but they may not yet understand each other. Laurent wants to be rid of this underlying unsurety, this unease that emanates from Damen’s brightness and beauty, the light upon Laurent’s world that puts into stark contrast all the unfinished seams, the ugly overgrowth on once-broken bones. He can’t relinquish any of it because it’s who he is, nothing is a pretense. 

He may have closed the shallow wound between them, but there is still time to scar.

★

Laurent is back for one whole day before Damen comes to him, raps his knuckles on the front door and stands in the mixture of city smog and mist that must have trailed Laurent back from Scotland. There is a slow pause between them in the doorway, and Laurent has a sudden image of the _Frau Holle_ story his father told him, and wonders if being showered in gold is really the best thing that could happen in a doorway, when letting Damen enter is already such a gift. Damen gives him an amused look of confusion when Laurent has to let out a laugh under his breath at the thought of Damen dressed in the step-sister’s frock.

Through some silent mutual agreement they bypass the sitting room on the ground floor, and ascend the stairs to Laurent’s room on the first. He’s not sure what exactly will be said, but he knows that they will be words better spoken in a greater private.

“How was the funeral?” Damen asks, once he’s wandered over to inspect the little bookshelf, and Laurent has assumed yet another nonchalant lean on the small surface of his writing desk. Laurent wants to impatiently bat away the conversation opener at the same time that he should say, “It was dark. Someone was buried.” Damen tosses a impish look over his shoulder.

“I hope it was the right person?” he says, and Laurent lets himself relax, just an inch.

“A professional such as yourself would never make such an amateur blunder,” says Laurent, a smile creeping onto his face, but he stalls its appearance by a fraction, just to get the other words out, the ones that have been brewing since Scotland. “Damen, I need to know something.”

Laurent waits politely for the barest trace of an acknowledgement before gripping the edge of the desk more firmly, and speaking.

“It seems that in the same way that I had stumbled into an apology, before, that I must express the – hope,” and here Laurent is ashamed to admit he’d almost said ‘_desire_’, “that you understand, completely, the fascination for the morbid and macabre you once mistook for whim or idle fancy is quite, erm. Embedded, in my soul, perhaps.” Laurent refuses to be embarrassed by the rather poetic admission, because that’s what this is about. “I need to ascertain your comprehension, before you let me – this, continue.”

Laurent finally amasses sufficient courage to meet Damen’s eyes, and finds a solid and achingly quiet earnestness there. Laurent pretends his breath doesn’t shake on his next inhale. 

“After my brother died, this was the only way I could hold everything together, and now I love it, too,” Laurent says, and when he asks, desperately, “Do you see?” and Damen nods, his beautiful brown eyes wide and always so compassionate, Laurent thinks that he could have this and start to deserve it, too. To have another person pull aside a curtain he thought was just a wall, and add a fraction of necessary sunlight. To have him read Laurent’s writing and comment and compliment, and most of all, understand him – 

“Laurent,” Damen says, the sound barely more than an exhale of breath. 

Laurent remembers, close after their first meeting in the graveyard, how Damen had admitted he didn’t know how to spell Laurent’s name, had only heard Laurent speak it aloud and wondered what kind of new vowels had been invented while he was growing up in Greece, and now it sounds on his tongue as if he’s been saying Laurent’s name his entire life, memorised into some sort of ossification, a new bone in the human body. He says it like Laurent’s name is the one thing he has made sure to perfect in his commandment of the language, prioritised over greetings, food, the weather. Laurent wishes he had the courage to say Damen’s full name like that too, give it the proper weight it deserves, the same power as the staticky buildup preceding a thunderstorm, the same anticipation one feels in the space between the flash of a bolt and the first booming rumble. ‘Damianos’ feels to Laurent like the name of some great being, only to be recited in some mystic spell. Damen had written his own full name out in the Greek letters once for him, and Laurent had carefully torn out the notebook page after, in the privacy of the pantry at home, folded it over itself, and kept it in his breast pocket for at least a week, taking it out before bed and running the faintest fingertips overtop of the pencil marks, angular and fluid in turns. 

Love is far too fragile a word to encompass the depth and force with which Laurent feels about this man. Perhaps it cannot be contained in any one word; affection is likewise weak, lust is too simplistic, and fondness is too friendly. Laurent feels utterly hindered by words for once in his entire life, but, he thinks, to contain an emotion so colossal within the confines of individual letters would be the least natural thing on this earth one could do. He must feel it only with his heart and chest and mind, the entire body except for the hand he writes with and the tongue he speaks with, can only act on the one thing that might barely begin to express how much he yearns –

Damen is now standing close enough for Laurent to bring a shaking hand up to Damen’s cheek, caressing from temple to chin and back around to his hair, not so much guiding as following the movements of Damen’s head as he bends down to place his lips on Laurent’s. He feels like melted honey dripping from the comb, pushing into the kiss with the force of a bee burrowing into a flower, intent on nectar. Laurent runs his hands under Damen’s jaw, down his arms and up his ribcage, like he wants to find all the places to feel a pulse quicken. 

Like the rolling of an ocean wave, Damen surges forward to tangle their steps at the desk so that it more solidly hits the back of Laurent’s thighs, and then pulls away from the kiss, eyes bright but mouth as serious as it is rosy. Their bodies are flush against each other, and Laurent thinks he may never release his grip from the broad expanse of Damen’s back, the better to feel Damen’s belly against his own, the unconscious in and out of his breath. Tide creeping back in, Damen rests his forehead on Laurent’s.

“I care for you, for your happiness,” Damen says, and Laurent has to close his eyes. “Your contentment from writing, joy from the things you write about – that will always have greater value than your conformation in society. I’m – I care for you deeply, Laurent. Immensely.” Damen tilts his head to nose at Laurent’s cheek and grips at Laurent’s hips, and this – this is tantamount to a compassionate dagger silently slid between ribs, but with Damen holding him just so, Laurent feels exceptional in his survival.

“How dare you try to end me with such _words_, Damen,” Laurent says, breathless, and instead of holding back his smile he turns it into another kiss, grasping his fingers in Damen’s curls to hold him there. 

Everything turns suddenly eager, and with mutual negotiation Laurent is slid back to sit fully on top of the desk. His legs harbour themselves around Damen’s hips, and when Damen shifts to trail his lips around Laurent’s neck he’s glad in so many things this world has to offer, yet if spurred to name them could only say the firmness of Damen’s torso against his, and how the sensation in turn makes Laurent feel likewise solid, real, alive_._

“It’s October thirty– oh,” Laurent starts after a while, cut off by the combination of a nip of teeth on his throat and the renewed press of Damen’s hardness against his own. He lets out a gasp, and then finishes, “_Thirty-first_,” in a keening tone. Damen’s hands have already peeled away his own jacket, both their waistcoats and neckties, shucked braces off of shoulders, and are creeping down to undo their fly-fronts. Laurent would be more inclined to assist in the matter if he felt he might have any sense of motor control beyond the clenching of his fists in Damen’s shirt, the constrained rocking of his hips.

Damen’s knuckles brush against Laurent’s cock through his shirt as he replies, much too calmly, “Yes, Hallowe’en. You’re very much in your territory.” Laurent wants to bite the cheeky smile off of Damen’s mouth but abandons the thought when Damen aligns their hips, his hand still deliciously wrapped around Laurent. It’s like lightning, he thinks briefly, wildly. The lightning as precursor to– 

“_Damianos_,” Laurent moans, and this must be exactly what was needed because Damen’s hips jerk forward roughly and he groans, the answering rumble of thunder. Laurent feels himself breaking apart under the ecstasy, slivers of abandoned wasp’s nest floating away, Damen’s hot breath washing over the meeting of Laurent’s jaw and neck. He’s very much _not_ in familiar territory, this amplitude of heavenly tension nothing like he’s ever even attempted to describe in his writings. 

Damen’s supporting hand on the small of his back is the only anchor Laurent has against the torturous pleasure wreaked by the other currently jerking both of their cocks, in time with the roll of hips. In desperation, Laurent drags a hand around to the front of Damen’s shirt, rucking the hem up and scratching his nails through the hair low on Damen’s belly. The friction, the sounds, the way they’re so achingly close, both to each other and to the precipice of climax, it’s all Laurent can do to clutch onto what he can reach of Damen’s skin, pull his face up to kiss a last groan into the softness of his lips. Laurent comes and it’s sinful, perversely good, hauled out of him with force, and everything clenches so hard he sees stars.

Damen finishes right along after, mouth open against Laurent’s in silent pleasure, brows furrowed up and cheeks ruddy from exertion. He readjusts his stance, and Laurent shakily lowers his legs to the floor, heart thumping a tattoo in his chest like it will beat right out of him. Damen breathlessly whimpers Laurent’s name, another cool tug on his blazing heart.

Eventually they clumsily collapse onto Laurent’s bed, tucking shirts back in messily overtop of sticky bellies that they will likely regret not washing sooner. Laurent vows that they’ll be fully undressed next time, or he’ll at least pull Damen out of his shirt to see the full extent of the hair he ran his fingers over, but then he pauses. A next time requires a continuation of these feelings, and Laurent has to be sure; before this month, he took much for granted where his slowly shifting relationship Damen was concerned, and he can’t allow himself to make the same mistake again.

Just as he turns to Damen to say as much, a quick black shape startles and streaks across the window pane in front of them, a tiny shriek reaching them through the glass; a bat. When Laurent recovers, he’s met with a knowing grin from Damen, eyes perfect and brilliant with endearment, and all Laurent can do is smile back. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at brigitttt (personal) and/or brigittttoo (side with writing), and also on twitter @brigitttt_ . Comments are much appreciated, thank you for reading!


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